The beautiful game

World Cup fever has infected Bath, and in the absence of the Norwegian national team to cheer on, I started thinking about a free and open source software team instead (geek? moi?).

In goal I'd play the Peter Shilton of Linux, Slackware founder Patrick Volkerding: more of a loner than a team player, but solid, dependable and has been around for years (and years, and years…).

At the back: Crispin Cowan (after making his name at FC AppArmor) and Eben Moglen (very strong in defence). At the heart of the team, I propose a flat midfield of Morton – Torvalds – Kroah-Hartman, with the current Debian Project Leader employed as a holding midfielder just behind them (though there have been criticisms that he doesn't release the ball early enough).

On the right wing, Jeremy Allison just edges out dangerous floater Larry Wall for his sexy Samba football, while out on the far, far left wing is RMS.

Up front, expensive star striker Mark Shuttleworth comes in to replace Gael Duval, who has been put on the bench, while I think we should risk playing Bruce Perens in the hole, dropping off Shuttleworth, if the manager can get them to play together.

Ah yes, the manager: we need a calm, diplomatic foreign figure with Brazillian links who can command respect among the players – Miguel de Icaza!

That's a team that would go far… only, can geeks actually play football?